i came here to be vague, but i think now it might be more beneficial to be explicit. today i had an anxiety attack (at least, that's what i think it was- i'm still trying to get to a place where i understand my mental health). it was my first one in a very long time, and it was altogether disappointing. i have been doing SO GOOD since i moved here and i hate that this is taking me over again. i hate feeling so sorry for myself and so....... ugh. last night i missed out on a really good opportunity to bond with a lot of new friends because i felt so bad. and just!!!! why!!! i was doing so good. the good news is with my depression here, it's harder to be alone and therefore harder to mope around and feel sorry for myself. i can't cry myself to sleep like i used to because it will draw the attention of my roommates, so i don't cry myself to sleep (which is good). and there's always people around making it hard to be alone and easier to make myself go outside and be with people. overall it's been so good. but i don't know what's happening and why the nights are getting hard again and why i broke down today. the worst part is because it happened in front of people, and while they were very nice and loving about it, it's still embarrassing. my friend put her arm around me and a boy gave me his danish but i'm so scared because i don't want him to see this. i don't want him to look at me and just see my illness. please don't see me for my illness

Ah, May. May has traditionally not been a very good month for me. From finals, which lead to stress and anxiety, to restlessness and worthlessness, to just general depression, it's always been cruel, despite my best attempts to love it. It's always been the girl I could never be friends with, despite my best efforts. Suffering through this month has me hoping for the coming of June (ah, sweet June!) who has always usually been kinder to me. I know it's naive, but please, let me have this. What always disappoints me when I have my repeated bouts with depression is how when they reoccur, they are always very hard. For some reason I repeatedly forget that mental illness of any kind is a constant war, not a battle that is over and done with. It is frustrating because having dealt with this before, I feel like I should know how to fight it. This is an old enemy on familiar terrain. Why is it so debilitating? I wouldn't say relapses happen a lot, but maybe they do and I just don't notice them unless they are earth-shattering, like this one is seeming to be. I am acutely aware of the fact that I am being horribly selfish and yet cannot and have no desire to change. One of my old flames proposed to his girlfriend tonight. We never dated, but he holds a place in my heart that I'd imagine is equal to that of an ex-boyfriend. His ultimate rejection shattered me last spring. He was always good-intending but never good to me. At one point, he was my best friend. He has been dating this HER for probably a year now, yet this feels all over again like a fresh wound. Like someone is picking at a scab. Please believe me when I say I've earnestly tried to be happy for them; it's been a year. I've been trying. The HER in question has made him happier than he's ever been. I have always been deluding myself into thinking that could ever be me. But it still feels like some unwelcome punch to the gut to hear this news. A fresh way of saying "it was never you. You are nothing." There is no real way for that not to sting. Especially when I had been hoping they'd fall apart since the minute i found out about their conception. Especially when he had been hostilely pursuing her for two years where she had not given him the time of day until one day she got desperate. Especially when I had been sitting here waving my arms shouting "I am here! Pick me!" It was never me; I was never right. I know I'm being incredibly selfish. I am turning this wonderful, joyous moment of love and celebration in their lives into one of suffocating self-pity. But I can't help it. This has, albeit unintentionally, added insult to injury. I already feel like I am too much and not enough and not worthy. I already hear his voice saying "it wasn't right" every night as I fall asleep and now it rattles around my head like an old snare drum. This is the boy who almost made me relapse into self-harm because of feeling so worthless last June. It's not an easy feeling to revisit. I am tired of existing. I don't want to die, but I would like to cease to exist. That is usually a thing that concerns people when you tell them, though. Here's hoping June will bring better days.

Tonight I sat with a dear friend of mine, and she told me that I'm "so much all in one" and initially, she was scared of me. I suppose she was trying to be complimentary; it was followed by a list of positive attributes (or at least, things I consider to be positive)- sassy, sarcastic, independent, nice. And I don't know the extent of why I'm feeling unsettled by this; I feel like I always end up upset about something. Maybe I just look for things to be upset about subconciously, so I can appeal to myself as a "starvingartist" or a "starvingwriter", a la Harriet the Spy.But the truth is, those words hit me. The more I chew on them, the worse they taste. I've struggled far too often with feeling I'm too much: coming off so strongly, feeling so many things all at once. The fact that one of my current dearest friends was scared of me is not a fact I take lightly. I don't want to be terrifying. I've always kinda known I was a bit of a paradox- self-reliant yet prone to get emotionally attached, optimistic yet cynical, loving yet sarcastic, blatantly confident yet crushingly critical. As an example, I thought to myself coming down the stairs at school a few weeks ago, "I would be the easiest girlfriend. You wouldn't even need to tell me I'm pretty. I already know." Yet, here I am, sick of looking at pictures of myself from my graduation cause I'm tired of seeing my uneven teeth and wide nose; I hate seeing my (actually average but comparatively) dwarfed frame next to those of my beautiful taller friends. I never minded before being so full of contradictions, and I, to an extent, enjoy being chaotic and hard to pin. I like being wild. I don't like being scary.The thing is, being too much usually ends up being not enough- not enough peace, not enough quiet, not enough... sanity, even. This is a hard battle I've had to fight with myself in the past. This is a battle I don't like to have resurface. Receiving words like that with no prior validation (well, to the extent that I need) is a crippling feeling. She loves me, it's not her words exactly that I mind.It's that I know she's right.And this is probably how many others perceive me. I don't want to be scary; I don't want to come off so strong that I seem insane (oh, insanity- another scary battle on its own). This has been a horrible fear of mine- being so much that I end up not enough. And being told I'm so chaotic now is at such an inoppurtune time. Those words scribbled on that page from him- "you are a great friend" saw into me again and again. I'm trying to take that, too, as complimentary. It's just a hard thing to swallow.Talking with her and another friend tonight about my stifling independence and yet my deep investment in others is making me feel unsettled and restless. Our conversation spanned how girls are either too independent or too needy, and how I'm mostly at the too independent side, before she acknowledged that I do get easily emotionally invested in people, and I might be at the happy medium. Am I? Is my need for independence good when I end up needing to crawl back next to (metaphorical) him at the end of the day? I don't know. I always end up writing depressing things here. I think I end up coming here hoping to find some kind of peace, to sort out my feelings. Nobody ever really writes like this when they're happy, do they? That's what photos are for.

I read, somewhere, ages ago about how the quote-on-quote "friendzone" is something you do to yourself when you refuse to see a friend of yours as anything but a romantic interest. You are the one putting yourself in this "friendzone." I've always stood by this definition in the past, and I think I still do. But it's a hard thing to make yourself believe.This definition relies on the belief that feelings can be changed on a whim, that you can change your mind as easily as the weather in Colorado changes, as easily as throwing away a candy wrapper. Feelings don't work like that. It takes meticulous training to get yourself to stop liking someone, if you can at all. Hell, it can take years for you to get over someone you've dated without speaking to them; even if you never dated, trying to get over a friend you're in constant contact with can be even worse than never speaking to them again. The thing is that once you've convinced yourself you have a chance, that all the signs are right and that the chances of your feelings being reciprocated are high, getting told that you were wrong is an awful blow to not only your metaphorical heart, but your self-esteem as well. Those lies of not being worthy and not enough come creeping in. And when instances such as the one described above are the epitome of all your recent romantic endeavors, well. So, as a result, what I'm trying to teach myself- again- is that I am enough for me. I don't need to be anything or anybody I'm not. Because I am enough, exactly how I am. Praise God, I am enough! However, this is an equally hard thing to make yourself believe. On good days it feels like thinly veiled cockiness and on bad days I want to bury myself in sand and be left alone, and I hate to be alone. Telling yourself something that has been more or less denied like that is hard. Telling someone you love them and not hearing it back is hard. Hearing apologies more than confirmation is hard. It's late, and my nights have been rough more often than not recently. I was hoping I might find a bit of peace here. So I will end with this: I am trying to pull myself out of this friendzone. I am trying to tell myself that I am enough. I am trying to show myself that it is not right now, but someday, there is someone who it will be right with. I will be right. They will be right. It will be right. It's just not now.

Today I saw Maleficent with my mother and brother. As one of my top two favorite villains, I have been so excited for this long-awaited film. While I appreciate the direction Disney took with this film, I'm not going to lie and say I loved every minute of it; in fact, it kind of let me down.

*WARNING: MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS.*

I'll start off saying what I loved. The movie started off really great. I loved how it began with Maleficent meeting Stefan as children and the developing love story between the two of them. I loved Stefan's descent and how he couldn't kill her so he instead cut off her wings. I loved how she met her familiar and their interaction. And I loved her revenge. She was the Maleficent of my dreams- so hurt she became bitter and vengeful, and the way she incorporated her past with Stefan- true love's kiss, the 16th birthday- was clever. She was powerful, and she was strong. I liked her. After that it all fell a little downhill. Maleficent's careful guardianship over the child bothered me. At first, I thought she kept saving her only to kill her later. But then, it was obvious she actually cared about Aurora, and then she tried to revoke the curse and she started to take Aurora back into the Moors and they just hung out there. Why? Having Aurora return so many times kinda seems pointless as I think over it. And then, the actual curse. While I do like the true love angle- there is no true love, or at least true ROMANTIC love, they already used that in Frozen. It's admirable, but it's one of Frozen's most quality points, what sets it apart from it's predecessors. And it's been so discussed and dissected in Frozen that doing this again almost seems overdone. Of course, it wouldn't make sense to have Phillip be the true love and contradict what they had just shown in Frozen, but sitting there watching it, I literally thought "of course, Disney". Plenty of moments after was just "what are you doing". The freaky wing thing? I understand it's magic and Maleficent is a fairy and maybe in the realm of the impossible wings could reattach themselves but to fly on their own? The battle (?) scene where Maleficent is caught in the net and the dragon and Stefan dying- just why. "We need Stefan to die somehow since he is the antagonist lolz so let's just make him fall off the castle" is what it seems like. If we had to go the whole "Maleficent is the good guy" route, then I would have loved to have seen some kind of forgiveness between the two of them instead of the poor guy dying. I also was irked by the minute factual changes they made. The fairy name changes were unnecessary, as was Phillip's father's name being John. Why? Just why? His name is Hubert and I spent the next ten minutes of the movie fuming over that small fact. Everything else had already been so tampered with, did we have to change their names, too? And the fact that Aurora was always called Aurora instead of being Briar Rose for a short time. I'm mainly irritated because I went to watch a movie about my favorite villain being a villain, not my favorite villain being a heroine. I had hoped they would explore why she became evil and the deeper reasons she wanted revenge, which they did, until they spent the next half of the movie building over it. While I do appreciate this movie as a different side's retelling and as a stand alone movie, I am irritated because Maleficent was great for simply being a villain. Maleficent was known for being a villain. She's definitely a stronger character, don't get me wrong, but I wish they had been able to keep that detail while keeping her maybe not evil, exactly, but so blinded by hurt that she becomes vengeful.A good movie overall, it just let me down.

Current Mood: discontent

Current Music:crushcrushcrush- Paramore

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Warning- *MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS!* Today Nina and I went and saw Frozen. Seeing it on opening day was a stupid idea, my mother told me, but honestly I'm so glad I did. I downloaded a picture of Elsa on my phone and tried my best to replicate her hair and makeup, and I gotta say, I think it turned out pretty well. We picked Nina up and Nina had made a icy-looking mask that she wore. We both obviously tried to replicate Elsa's makeup cause we both were wearing purple eye shadow haha. We got to the theater and bought our tickets and took pictures by the big posters they have outside. We went inside, had our tickets checked, freaked out, and went inside the theater. Previews were okay, I wasn't really digging any of them. But the short before the movie was adorable. Then the movie started. The music at the beginning was breathtaking but started to annoy me after a bit. I started tearing up when Elsa hit Anna in the head and again when their parents died, and I'm not sure the tears ever subsided, especially during the last half hour or so. Hans really had me falling for him for a while there, and I even shipped Kristoff and Anna hardcore. Speaking of Hans....His betrayal freaked me out and surprised me so bad. I thought I accidentally read somewhere that Hans and Anna ended up together and Kristoff and Elsa ended up together, so his betrayal, while shocking, ended up overjoying me, because it meant that Kristoff and Anna ended up together. Because, Kristoff man. While during the beginning I was totally smitten with Hans, when Kristoff came in, he totally swept me off my feet. His gruffness and adorable brown eyes and blonde hair... his duets with reindeer... his care and love for Anna... I love him so much more. I love him. I just love him. When Anna and Hans met and the whole Love Is An Open Door really surprised me because a lot of critics have gotten on Disney Princesses for the whole "love at first sight" thing. So I think maybe the betrayal may be appreciated by those same critics, along with Elsa and Kristoff's view on it.The movie could not have been better honestly, I loved it so much, more then Brave and maybe even Tangled (shockingly enough). I feel like Anna is pretty much me, so awkward and excited. I loved Elsa too, she's so strikingly beautiful and such a tragic character. However, I feel like I expected Elsa to have a bigger role. The movie was all about Anna and I was glad that the sister aspect of the movie shone through, but I felt like it was only prevalent at the very end.I also thought it was a little weird because the villain was the Duke of Wesselton, right? And he didn't really have a very...sharp role in the movie. Because then Hans came in. But I guess that's a good things, it sets the movie apart.I'm really glad I was adamant on not reading any spoilers or even listening to the songs before the movie came out, because it made the movie so much better. I had the best time today, and I really can't think of any way it could've been better.

Over the past few days, I realized something. I realized that while happiness is a choice, it's a lot of work to make yourself happy all the time and have a postitive attitude for everything, especially when you're a girl (with those horrendous mood swings and all). That's not an excuse to be sad and mope around all the time, but it's definetly ok to do that sometimes. Happiness is hard. It requires effort sometimes more, sometimes less, but always effort, cause not everything in life exists to make you happy and bring joy to all.So when I realized this, I asked myself, why do I try to be happy all the time when sometimes I don't want to be? There's really no point in trying to be happy and make yourself smile when you don't feel like it at all. What I think is important is just to make the most of things while they're happening. I don't really know exactly how to put it other than that.It's....liberating. To know you have no obligation to be something and act a certain way all the time. To just wear your heart on your sleeve and be happy while your happy and be sad while your sad. After Sheryl leaves, I always have this sudden zest for life. I'm not sure why though.Don't get me wrong, I hate feeling/being depressed. I look back at last year, all that happened, how I felt, and the people that made me feel that way, and I shudder. And actually sometimes get depressed just thinking about it. I don't want to go back to how I felt last year. I don't want to feel that way ever again, like there's no way out. But all I mean is, if I had tried to make myself happy last year, I think I would've been more miserable. It's too much effort. Like trying to fix broken relationships when you're getting hurt even more trying.But really, you can't be happy for no reason. Just like you can't be depressed for no reason. I need a reason to be happy, just like I need a reason to be sad.So right now I'm very happy. Though I'm not sure why. But I always realize the reason why in the future.And I'm in love with life right now.I am proof that God is alive and well. Cause how else could I have such a transformation to the way I am now?

Remember how about a year ago I posted a long rant about how I'm more like Rapunzel than one girl at school? Well, she "dressed up" like Rapunzel (Spirit Week. Character Day) today. Yeah...still not working it. Just saying.